Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire United Airlines in heap of trouble

My family got broken up by Delta ,my wife ,son and 2 year old Granddaughter,they were over booked and told us one would have to stay overnight,l told them my Granddaughter would stay behind,they said no, I protested and the agent said if one of didn't stay behind none of us could fly and Delta would not put us up.One day and 420 miles later we were back together again.

We now fly only Alaska and spend the extra 30 dollars for guarantee seat.

They should have been very careful in removing him in the cell phone age we live in, with caveats like "we want to be assured that you safely get up and out, sir"....THAT was their mistake.
The guy was looking for this. He was asked to get up, he should have gotten up. Whiney-assed homo.
They have a legal right to remove him, he refused.
They deal with douchbags 24/7. I don't blame them for caving his skull, too bad the drug peddling wimp survived.

There's legal, then there's legal but stupid. Some here can't understand the difference.

Even my best friend, a senior FBI agent, texted me last night about this. His text started with "WTF was United thinking?"

The flight was not over booked. It was full yes but United wanted to fly out 4 employees and wanted 4 seats. I believe the offer was a free ticket + 800 bucks but no takers. So United picked 4 names by random.

i meant to chime in earlier but bought a few shares of UAL instead...rallying quite nicely of the lows right now

I read an article from a lawyer who specializes in this


Bottom line is he says - since 9/11, if you don't obey the instructions of the flight crew you're going to have a bad day.

The airline contract is to get you where you are going, they don't guarantee what plane they take you there with.

Where they messed up he said, was not telling him their obligations ahead of time in reimbursing him and accommodating him as a involuntary passenger.

They are required by law to discuss this with him before they ask him to leave the plane, and he says if they are forthright with the information, that he could receive as much as 4x the amount of his ticket value, or they get him there within 2 hours of his departure time for 2X (or whatever).

Instead, they attempt to negotiate with passengers in this lowball thing building up to the required by law amounts.

Of course no amount of money might have persuaded him to leave. At that point they should have addressed the situation by offering additional money to anyone willing to take his place.

They are probably thinking the federal law is on their side and the other couple left without incident. United wasn't the one that forcibly removed him from the plane, it was law enforcement and federal law is on their side also.

Don't know about anyone else, but if I am on an aircraft and a law enforcement official asks me to leave, I leave peacefully and make my case later if I think I was in the right. There is zero upside in me resisting the officer. I am probably not going to whip all of them and if I did I will be the worse for wear when reinforcements arrive.

The doctor was stupid and United is taking all the heat when there is plenty to go around.

By now, I bet united wishes they had offered a million dollars per seat.


It would have been cheaper.


Overbooking is fraud, per se. IMO.

Airport nazis with more power than brains.

GIVE THE AIRLINER RETURN CREW A RENTAL CAR WITH GPS. As I understand via FOX news it's only a four hour drive for gods sake.

[bleep] idiots took longer that that to replane.

But you know what? If I hit the lottery and I'm that guy I'm throwing an even bigger fit for the cameras. Don't taze me bro.

It is sad that they chose to break up a family traveling together. I would hope that is unusual.

In this United incident, the story claims that "the computer randomly chose the people that had to get off", including the guy in the video. I believe that may be only partially true, and a way to deflect blame or avoid the accusation of profiling.

It is the policy of most of the airlines that when they have to involuntarily remove someone, the people that paid the least for their ticket get pulled off first. This is regardless of when they made their reservation, even months before. The computer displays this info to the agents, but it isn't exactly "random".

This makes financial sense because refunding the ticket or computing compensation is relative to what their ticket cost them. Again, it is a case of dollars driving the decisions.

People that brag about getting the cheapest ticket possible should understand that their is more risk of being bumped. But the ticket agents and ticket websites never mention this fact.

Everything comes down to dollars. The traveling public votes with their dollars. They complain about the lousy conditions, crammed seating, and lousy service, but they won't pay for it. When surveyed, they say they will, but the daily thousands of ticket sales prove over and over again that they won't. So, we are stuck with what we have.

If one airline squeezes in one more row of seats, the other airlines have to follow. Competition is fierce that way.

The FAA could help, but they won't. The FAA could demand better minimum aisle widths, and seat widths, and knee and head room, and better carry-on luggage capacity, all in the name of safety and for quicker emergency evacuations. But they don't.

The FAA caves to the airline associations that cry about revenue and cost (dollars). The FAA could require a level playing field among the airlines with much more comfortable accommodations. But then the tickets would cost more, and fewer of the passengers wearing sweatpants and t-shirts could afford to fly around the country whenever they feel like it.

Just like they say that voters get the government they deserve, in the case of the airlines, the public has gotten the service they deserve, because of their constant demand for the cheapest fares.

Last time I flew I thought I was on geriatric airlines. ALL the crew had lots of gray hair

Bangs head on table

It's not about what United can legally do. Their contract of carriage was written by their lawyers and it undoubtedly absolves them of any and all responsibility for everything up to and including gutting Grandma with a spork. Yes they were legally within their rights to remove him. Yes the cops can legally remove him.

It's about what it's going to cost United in the court of public opinion. Right now that video is going viral in China. China is United's big targeted expansion market because they have the biggest route structure of any american airline in Asia. What's the message from that video? If you're an Asian guy causing no disturbance whatsoever & United wants the seat you've paid for then they'll drag you off the plane and beat you up. There are a billion Chinese and many of them have money, United wants some of that money. Having a video all over the internet of an Asian guy getting beaten up at the bequest of United isn't good for getting that money.

Again, it's not about what's legal. I can legally shoot my neighbor's 4 month old lab puppy for chasing the ducks around my pond but I don't do it because it would make me a dickhead and piss off my neighbor. It's called judgement and to get through day to day life it helps to have some of it. It also helps to have it when you're running a service based business. United doesn't make anything, they sell a service. When you send in cops to beat up your customers that did nothing other than avail themselves of that service then you're going to lose in the court of public opinion.

Legality be damned, people have a basic instinct about right and wrong and form their opinions based upon that. They don't care that section 42.b of the contract of carriage says that they can do that, they just know that a man minding his own business was screwed with and they'll remember that.

One saving grace for United might be that they already had the reputation of dismal service so it's kind of hard to make it much worse.

You are taking my response out of context. I am not absolving United. I only answered what were they thinking in my opinion. Their thinking was shortsighted to say the least.

I was also saying in my opinion that the passenger was stupid to react the way he did.

Now after the public backlash United's CEO has issued an apology statement. Yesterday his statement was one of defiance and blaming the passenger, today his tune has changed:

Dear Team,

The truly horrific event that occurred on this flight has elicited many responses from all of us: outrage, anger, disappointment. I share all of those sentiments, and one above all: my deepest apologies for what happened. Like you, I continue to be disturbed by what happened on this flight and I deeply apologize to the customer forcibly removed and to all the customers aboard. No one should ever be mistreated this way.

I want you to know that we take full responsibility and we will work to make it right.

It’s never too late to do the right thing. I have committed to our customers and our employees that we are going to fix what’s broken so this never happens again. This will include a thorough review of crew movement, our policies for incentivizing volunteers in these situations, how we handle oversold situations and an examination of how we partner with airport authorities and local law enforcement. We’ll communicate the results of our review by April 30th.

I promise you we will do better.

Sincerely,

Oscar

https://hub.united.com/united-express-3411-statement-oscar-munoz-2355968629.html

The TSA never cared whether my son was 15 months or 15 years; they were intent on frisking me, my kid lying helpless next to a complete stranger on an airport bench be damned....or walking under their guide ropes while my hands were splayed in submission, so they had reason to then search a 2-year-old.





This part actually makes perfect sense, and most, I think, would understand.....and, yes, that would generally mean I would risk being bumped.

But I hate to think that a public figure would be treated differently than a common 'Joe', or that the guy next to me has less rights than I do simply because he has a few traffic tickets...... which is where some seem to be going with this. And perhaps this particular passenger was warned that he was going to be forcibly removed if he didn't comply. If that is the case, then the airline was negligent and putting other passengers at risk by leaving them on board for a risky process involving a potentially combative passenger.

Ha,..now it's "truly horrific", as opposed to "re-accommodate".

And how many Entitlement Morons are going to try to emulate him now?

Made it to NO without trouble or issues, as usual. United has been, and remains, my favorite domestic airline.

Last time I flew them was '82 I think...something about being followed by Alaska's Gold Coast Service, long since discontinued, which made their cardboard food service seem rather lame. Heck, even Wien was better, and they weren't exactly healthy in those days.